Exclusive: July's Top 100 Best-Selling Comics

The mystery deepens for Batman and his allies in Dark Days: The Casting #1 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Andy Kubert, Jim Lee, and John Romita, Jr., DC Entertainment's prelude to their Dark Nights: Metal and the best-selling comic book of July.

DC Entertainment had three titles among the top ten. In addition to Dark Days: The Casting #1, Tom King and Mikel Janin's Batman #26, the second chapter of "The War of Jokes and Riddles," ranked #3 and King and Clay Mann's Batman #27, the third chapter in the storyline, ranked #4.

Marvel Comics had six titles in the top ten, led by Charles Soule and Jim Cheung's Astonishing X-Men #1 at #2, followed by Nick Spencer and Leinil Francis Yu's Secret Empire #6 at #5, Spencer and Andrea Sorrentino's Secret Empire #7 at #6, Jason Aaron and Salvador Larroca's Star Wars #33 at #7, Cullen Bunn and Dalibor Talajic's Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again #1 at #8, and Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli's Spider-Men II #1 at #10.

Image Comics rounded out the top ten with Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's The Walking Dead #169 at #9.

Among the premier publishers, Dark Horse Comics' Neil Gaiman's American Gods: Shadows #5 was their top book at #94, while IDW Publishing's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo One-Shot was the publisher's top ranked book at #145.

TOP 100 COMIC BOOKS
Based on Total Unit Sales of Products Invoiced in July 2017

This information may not be reproduced in any format without the express permission of Diamond Comic Distributors.

How does Diamond calculate the charts? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which includes the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from sales made to thousands of comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world.  Additional sales made to online merchants and other specialty stores may be included as well.

Unit and dollar market shares are calculated based upon orders for comic books, graphic novels, and magazines invoiced and shipped to Diamond customers during any given month, which comprises pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable. Please note that comics marked with an asterisk (*) have had their reported quantities reduced due to retailer returnability, and thus may rank lower on the charts than their actual sales would reflect.

About the Diamond Sales Index: The Sales Index of selected monthly Best Seller Charts is presented as a comparative tool for retailers and publishers. It presents Diamond’s monthly sales for individual titles in relation to Diamond’s total sales for the issue of DC Comics' monthly Batman comic book. (Batman is used as the control title – with a value of 100 – because sales of Batman usually remain relatively stable. This month, as Batman did not ship, Convergence #8 from DC Entertainment was used as the control index.) This allows for easy comparison to other titles and helps retailers gauge their orders for all other titles. This formula is only a guide, other factors may impact a titles’ ability to sell in certain locations and clientele.